E-mail a great office tool, but sometimes you need to talk

Practice Management. By Mike Norbut, AMNews staff. March 28, 2005.

How many times has this happened to you? A member of your staff e-mails a question about a patient record, which you promptly answer between patient appointments. Fifteen minutes later, when you check e-mail again, you find a follow-up question to the query you just answered.

This could feasibly continue for a few more exchanges, or it could end, but not without a final note from the staff member thanking you for your assistance. Either way, you spent extra time dealing with the issue over e-mail when a face-to-face conversation initially probably would have been quicker.

Physicians are almost always crunched for time, and e-mail certainly assists in multitasking. It promotes efficiency. You don't need to see the staff member to communicate. It helps you avoid having your desk cluttered with all those dastardly sticky notes.

However, there are some instances when e-mail can slow you down, and without proper protocols in place to avoid extra work, you and other staff members can find yourselves double-clicking unnecessarily.

While they insist e-mail is an integral part of practice today, some consultants suggest it shouldn't be seen as more than a good complement to other forms of communication.

"There's a tendency for e-mails to create more work, because some of these e-mail exchanges literally become a pingpong game," said Joyce Flory, PhD, a health care technology consultant based in Chicago. "Imagine multiple pingpong games going on at the same time."